The Autistic Brain

Michael Shermer, a psychologist, historian of science, and professional skeptic – he founded Skepticmagazine — called this property of the human mind patternicity. He defined patternicity as “the tendency to find meaningful patterns in both meaningful and meaningless data.”

What all these examples tell me is that in society, the three kinds of minds — visual, verbal, pattern thinkers — naturally complement one another. When I recall collaborations in which I’ve successfully participated, I can see how different kinds of thinkers worked together to create a product that was greater than the sum of its parts.

Yet society puts them together without anybody thinking about it.

But what if we did think about it? What if we recognized these categories consciously and tried to make the various pairings work to our advantage? What if each of us was able to say, Oh, here’s my strength, and here’s my weakness — what can I do for you, and what can you do for me?

Let’s apply this same principle to the marketplace. If people can consciously recognize the strengths and weaknesses in their ways of thinking, they can then seek out the right kinds of minds for the right reasons. And if they do that, then they’re going to recognize that sometimes the right mind can belong only to an autistic brain.

I remember a few years back, when our son Matthew was suffering a great deal from his Asperger’s and related conditions (sensory processing disorder) — which meant that his parents, especially his mother, struggling with him were suffering too — I thought that there was no amount of giftedness that was worth what that child was going through. He’s a really intelligent kid, but I would have traded that genius in a heartbeat for respite for him from what really was torment. He has grown out of most of the bad stuff, thank God, and I can see easily now how his mild autism can be a tremendous intellectual and vocational asset to him, depending on the field he goes into, even as it remains to some degree a social problem. Put simply, he sees things that most of us don’t, and he sees them as a result of the way his brain is wired.

This is a gift. It is at times a terrible gift, but it is a gift.

If it had been possible at the time he was conceived to genetically engineer autism out of him, I’m sure we would have done it. Wouldn’t you have? And yet, had we done that, he wouldn’t have the gifts he does. He also would have been spared a lot of suffering.

As I’ve said before, learning about autism and Asperger’s has revealed to me ways that I’m pretty clearly on the spectrum myself. I think about myself as a Little League player. My dad, who coached me, said that at every moment I knew every possible play that should happen, depending on where the batter hit the ball. Though I had poor motor skills, my mind was constantly computing these things, so I would be ready to do my part as shortstop or second baseman. See, I remember all this as misery-making, because I was so anxious that I would fail to do the right thing, or one of my teammates would fail to do the right thing. In retrospect, it seems that my ability to see deeply into the mechanics of the game was inseparable from my rigid expectations of human behavior. In other words, the strategic gift I had came at the cost of intense anxiety and frustration, in part because I suffered a motor-skills deficit, like many kids on the spectrum.

This is pretty much why I would have preferred to have had my head in a book as a kid, instead of being on the ball field. But I digress. Up with Temple Grandin and neurological diversity, is my point.

Going one step beyond what was already presented here, we have before us both a wide variety of human strengths and weaknesses, which we should be careful about classifying as “disorders,” AND we have a wide variety of serious disorders, which we should be careful about classifying as “differently abled” e.g., Trisomy-21, which has no up sides that I have ever heard or read. Making the picture really complicated, there are vast borderlands where it is difficult to tell one from the other, or that partake of a bit of both, e.g., Matthew suffered a good deal from the way his brain was wired.

We should be very, very, cautious about letting anyone, in medicine or law, make authoritative binding pronouncements about THE way much of anything should be handled. If we allow for a wide diversity of approaches and individual or family choices, its true that some of the choices will be bad ones. Its also true that if we set a one size fits all, many of the outcomes will be bad, perhaps more of them, hardly less. At least the good and bad outcomes won’t be rigidly set to favor one set of needs and aptitudes at the expense of another. There will be a chance, for any given individual, that things may come out right.

1. I believe it was Stanislaw Lem who wrote a story about a future in which jobs were paired up with particular traits — the Fed chairman was (what they called back then) a manic-depressive, to give regularity to the business cycle.
😉

2. More seriously, I love the acceptance the neurodiversity movement promotes but worry that it can also breed acceptance of our dismal failure as a nation to give any but a handful of kids an adequate amount of the kind of treatment that can help minimize the pain and disability that can come along with an autistic brain.

It is wonderful that we are able to recognize and appreciate the gifts that high-functioning autism can bring. But we also need to support the families and children who are lower-functioning. Many children with autism will never be able to care for themselves or be self-supporting, and some will only be able to do so with very costly educational interventions. There may be many Temples and Matthews, but there are also many who can’t toilet themselves or know colors by age 5.

A former client with a moderate-to-severely autistic child is currently “shopping” school districts to find the one with the best services. She will move to that district. Her other alternative? A private school with a price tag of $40k annually. These parents need all the help that they can get.

“It is wonderful that we are able to recognize and appreciate the gifts that high-functioning autism can bring. But we also need to support the families and children who are lower-functioning. Many children with autism will never be able to care for themselves or be self-supporting, and some will only be able to do so with very costly educational interventions.”

there are times that I think i’m slightly Aspbergers. couldn’t get my head out of book when i was young (and still so today) was good at sports, but didn’t like sports like baseball (not enough movement) while I thoroughly enjoy soccer (watching and playing), can visualize things easily and my mind is filled with factoids. I pointed out something to a colleague the other day and he asked “how in the L did you know that?” to which I responded “dont know, just do”

Karth: The overriding question remains: who’s going to pay for dealing with our Siarlys-friend’s “wide diversity of approaches” ? Taxpayers ? Families ? In this day and age, I submit that that must be the first question addressed.

So if the numbers don’t add up, too damn bad for a kid like Rod’s, if he’s not lucky enough to have parents like Rod with the resources and motivation to deal with his need, huh? This is the same attitude as that of the ones who want to sell the art museum in Detroit–times are hard, so let’s sell whatever humanity we have left and hope the going price is good.

Most gifts are, in some way, terrible gifts. But they are still gifts, still acts of grace on the part of a God who will not leave humanity — collectively, communally and individually — to its own devices.

I’m a bit asperger-y myself, as is my eldest daughter. When you combine it with some ADHD the fun really begins!

Anyway, a really interesting book I read the other day was “The Essential Difference,” by Simon Baron-Cohen. In addition to being Borat’s father, he is also an autism researcher. His theory is that men are generally systemizers, and women are generally empathizers; and that autism is a hypermasculinized brain. Very interesting stuff.

Rod, I remember some few months back someone else made a similar observation, and you responded quite angrily. What changed? (I am pleased for you that it has, definitely, I’m just curious what your process was. Was it just him growing past some of the worst?)

[NFR: What was the observation? I’m trying to remember. Did it have to do with abortion and autism? I’m not trying to back off what I said before, but I honestly don’t remember. Assuming you’re right, yes, it was him growing past the worst, period. Seeing what this kid was suffering from ages 7 to 10, we never could have imagined that he would be where he is today. If he had been in normal school — that is, if we hadn’t had the resources to homeschool him, and (to be precise) if he didn’t have the mother that he does — I can’t imagine where he’d be. — RD]

Turmarion writes: “So if the numbers don’t add up, too damn bad for a kid like Rod’s, if he’s not lucky enough to have parents like Rod with the resources and motivation to deal with his need, huh? This is the same attitude as that of the ones who want to sell the art museum in Detroit–times are hard, so let’s sell whatever humanity we have left and hope the going price is good.”

What’s the priority, O Turmarion ? I’m the father of an autistic child myself, so I would fancy that I have some small knowledge of what is involved in dealing with a situation like this. My son’s mother and I have to deal with his issues and needs every day, and there are days when it is hard—and days when it is harder. There is never an “easy” day—find me someone who has an autistic child and says that he/she/it has “easy” days with that child, and I’ll find you a liar, or worse.

But I am also a taxpayer and a citizen, so that question must occur to me. There are limits to what I believe I can ask for in terms of help for him while maintaining a clear conscience. The responsibility for his care lies with me and his mother. First, and foremost.

So yes, prioritizing is the order of the day. In the words of the immortal political philosopher Mick Jagger, “you can’t always get what you want.” And if that means some don’t get everything they want…..that’s life. Too bad.

And as to selling the art in Detroit—-I’m stunned that it wasn’t done before. Those in authority who waited so long before considering the option are, IMO, guilty of dereliction of duty, public dishonor, criminal malfeasance in office and criminal misprision of public funds. They should be doing hard time, making little ones out of big ones. The art sale should have come first, not after police are laid off and fire protection halted.

Re: His theory is that men are generally systemizers, and women are generally empathizers; and that autism is a hypermasculinized brain.

You should look up some of the suite of personality traits that seem to correlate, in men, with ‘masculinization’ vs. ‘feminization’ at a critical stage in prenatal development. It does seem like autism and Asperger’s correlate with other ‘hypermasculine’ traits, while some other personality traits and neuropsychiatric conditions (including depression, anxiety and schizophrenia) correlate with ‘femininity’. For what it’s worth, I seem to be more on the ‘feminized’ side psychologically/behaviourally, though not physically.

From my small graduating class, at least two of my high school classmates now have autistic sons. Judging from their Facebook postings, I would assume they’re both high functioning kids with some quirks. I kind of doubt either would have been singled out as autistic when their parents and I were in school. I’ve interviewed the parents of severely autistic kids who are non-verbal, scream for hours and are never going to be able to live outside of their families or an institution. There’s a big difference in disability there.

I do wonder why there are now so many more cases of autism, especially high functioning autism, being diagnosed. I have my doubts that it’s actually 1 in 50, as the stats are now claiming. When you get to that frequency, I think we’re talking about a normal human variant and not a disorder in a lot of these cases.

On principle I agree with Turmarion, but Lord Karth has a valid point. If we choose to do good, and if doing good costs money, we do need to specify where and how and how much we are going to raise for the purpose. This gets a little murky when we are dealing with a pot as large as federal revenue, because there are so many competing priorities, each of which is a rather small fraction of the whole. But the federal revenue is not limitless, and we cannot simply run on debt forever.

I wasn’t entirely talking about providing wonderful programs. I was cautioning about having rigid regulations which impose a firm diagnosis, where no firm evidence of a definable general condition exists, and mandating that parents, teachers, individuals concerned SHALL DO X, because some over-valued authoritative manual says this is THE thing to do.

We might even cut some expenditures this way.

We are already medicating a lot of kids on the flimsiest of assumptions about how much we know what is really going on. SOME kids actually benefit from some of these medications. The rest either need a more fine-tuned medical program, or to be taken off meds entirely.

Those who do indeed need some pattern of treatment or special arrangement, probably are being treated, ineffectually, now. We should first be more flexible in WHAT that treatment consists of.

And, we might save some money by letting those who really want nothing more than to sit in the sunlight and fall asleep do that, rather than bundling them on to buses every morning to take then to expensive day programs, then bundling them back onto buses to take them home again, crying all the way. A nice stable predictable environment is all SOME severely cognitively disabled people need or want.

And then perhaps we could look at where some increased spending might do some good.

We have a three-year old that is relatively high-functioning, which beats where we were a year ago when we thought that he had a more severe case. Still, it’s a daily struggle. It is really amazing, though, watching him do puzzles suggested for kids several years older than him.

“If it had been possible at the time he was conceived to genetically engineer autism out of him, I’m sure we would have done it. Wouldn’t you have? ”

No. Never.

The challenges of mothering and homeschooling a Asperger’s kid has been a gift from God. Of course it was heart-rending to watch how he suffered, it still is, but we as a family learned to cope and adapt, and to laugh through it all. My “aspie” is now a delightfully quirky young adult who is a compassionate and loving soul, a functional, productive member of society who relishes being unique. His younger brother is a very kind young man, a kindness I think he learned through how we as a family dealt with his brother’s challenges.

So engineer it out of a person? I understand you did not literally mean this, but still, no.

Rod, someone suggested that autism be viewed less as a disease and more as a different way of viewing the world, and at the time it made you very angry, as I remember it. At the time you only saw suffering. I’m really glad that has changed.

Talk to me about autism when you have an 8-year-old like I do, who can’t talk properly or toilet himself. There’s a really good chance he will never be independent. I can’t sleep sometimes worrying about what will happen to him, what will happen to us when we are in our 60s and he’s in his 30s. How will we cope? How will we survive?

It has eaten our lives. And people who cut budgets for special education have my contempt and hatred, forever.

“Talk to me about autism when you have an 8-year-old like I do, who can’t talk properly or toilet himself. There’s a really good chance he will never be independent. I can’t sleep sometimes worrying about what will happen to him, what will happen to us when we are in our 60s and he’s in his 30s.”

Yes. Comparing children with Aspergers to children with severe autism is like saying that having a child with a missing finger is equivalent to having a child with a missing arm.

[NFR: OK, but look, I wasn’t saying my kid with Asperger’s is the same as a kid with severe autism. No need to take umbrage. Aspies are on the spectrum, though, and five years ago, I would have traded all the intellectual gifts my child has if it would have meant ending his suffering from autism — however mild its form in him — and its related conditions. Because the worst symptoms passed, and he got somewhat better, I’m able to see his autism in a different light. I still wouldn’t wish it on anybody, no matter how mild, but it’s easier for me now to see his particular condition as something that might help him, conceivably, instead of a total handicap. We look for hope where we can. — RD]

You haven’t learned much, RD, or you wouldn’t support the politicians who are actively working to make my family’s life even more difficult by crushing special education budgets and life supports for people like my son. Most families out there can’t afford to plop down $40,000 a year for a special autism school, so we have to rely on IEPs and underfunded, undermanned public schools with special ed budgets that have just been sequestered. Some of us live in states that have waiting lists for support services that are five years long.

What happens when my son turns 18? Is there any possible way my wife and I will be able to care for him? He’s 8 now, has the size and strength of an 8 year old, but has the mentality of a 2.5 year old. Can you imagine that? We are lucky in the sense that he has a good disposition and is not prone to violence, although that may change when he gets to puberty.Even now, he is almost too big for us to handle. Give that another year and what happens then?

I’m very glad that your son is finding his way. And I’m glad you understand that high-functioning Asbergers is NOT THE SAME as low-functioning severe autism.

Perhaps you can understand also that churches and charities will not solve this problem, and that undercutting and hampering and underfunding and de-funding special education programs, as many of your fellow conservatives are actively doing, will literally destroy the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, the most vulnerable people, the weakest and most helpless.

The churches and religions have never stepped up with this problem, and even if they wanted to, the problem is too broad for private measures to solve. I hope you can understand that. I doubt you will.

[NFR: What you don’t understand about me and my kind of conservatism is a lot. I’ll leave it at that, and wish you well, because you have a great burden to bear. — RD]

I should add to the general conversation that it is *not* the case that our son simply grew out of the worst of his Asperger’s. Getting older did help, but my wife worked hard searching out and attempting therapies for him. Most of them didn’t work. Some of them sort of worked. The best of all, I think, was the occupational therapy for sensory processing disorder — that, and the discovery, via a neuro-opthalmologist, that Matt’s brain thought the center of his body was a foot behind where it really was. Speciality lenses — very costly! — retrained his optic nerve. When that process ended, he was noticeably less anxious, for obvious reasons.

It has been an uphill struggle, though. I think my wife would say it has been a struggle crawling on one’s knees on sharp gravel.

“The churches and religions have never stepped up with this problem, and even if they wanted to, the problem is too broad for private measures to solve.”

Yes, again. My adult sister has severe autism, and now lives in a supervised environment that allows her to experience as full a life as is possible for her, but it costs money and it’s government money, from the Medicaid Waiver program.

Volunteers are wonderful, whether from religious or secular charities or just because they are good friends and neighbors, but how many volunteers are willing to help with someone with severe autism month after month, year after year, when it can involve what I won’t write about in detail here, but are very unpleasant, not to say disgusting behaviors on the part of the autistic? It breaks the spirit and the health of the families, and there are very few volunteers saintly enough to cope. And I intend to lay no blame here, I would be in the same position if it wasn’t my sister who had autism.

I go again to this quote from James Madison in The Federalist Papers: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”

Karth, while still disagreeing with you regarding societal priorities, I must give you enormous credit for walking the walk, not just talking the talk. So many people who go on about what should or shouldn’t be funded are perfectly willing to gore somebody else’s ox, but turn on a dime when they’re the ones being affected. You are admirably consistent in this respect, and I give you kudos for that. Certainly, raising an autistic child is no walk in the park, and you are to be commended for making the sacrifices and bearing the burdens necessary in such a situation.

Also, it is obviously true that there are not infinite resources available; and I agree with Siarlys that we could stand to use the resources we have in a more intelligent, individualized way, and that doing so might actually save money.

I would, however, point out that sixty years ago or so when there were much fewer government resources, autistic children and children with similar issues often were institutionalized or worse–that was the heyday of lobotomies, remember. There are limits even to what families taking full responsibility can do (unless they have vast financial resources), and many children who are able to stay at home and live more nearly normal lives now would have been institutionalized, probably for life, back then.

I also direct everyone to Blairburton’s post. As he points out, volunteers and families often can’t do it all, no matter how great they are. Society can’t do everything, but it ought to do something; and some things are important enough to be priorities even in tight financial times.

Talk to me about autism when you have an 8-year-old like I do, who can’t talk properly or toilet himself.

Well, that’s why its called a spectrum. There is a whole range of possible outcomes, from a whole range of ways that the same limited genetic mis-cues can express themselves in an individual human being. What your 8-year-old needs is not what Matthew needs, and both are different from what a bi-polar relative of mine needs, and no rigid straight-jacket should dictate either “you need this, yes you do, don’t argue,” OR “that’s not what we do for people with your diagnosis.”

Incidentally, I believe many who can’t take care of themselves at age 8, and probably never will be able to, need to be in humane institutional environments where they can be cared for and have at least a predictable life to work with, not scattered in family homes they really can’t cope with because some liberal bureaucrat thinks its cute for everyone to be “out in the community.”

I’m glad you had the financial resources to help your son, Rod. Unfortunately most families don’t.

I’ve read your stuff for several years so I think I am reasonably familiar with your ideas. It is apparent our experiences are very, very different. What the autism trial has taught me is that the persons most vocal about their faith are the most likely to abandon you.

The most help we’ve ever gotten from friends and helpers has been from liberals and pagans and atheists. The more vocally devout, “conservative” members of our family abandon us to our fate, all the while complaining that their taxes are too high.

Oddly enough I haven’t lost my faith. It holds on somehow despite the anger and bitterness that eats at me. (which has obviously come out in these posts, for that I’m sorry).

Love Temple Grandin’s work. My spouse, a psychotherapist, shares it with her interns to get them to think very carefully and differently about pathologizing their clients rather than meeting and treating them.

But here’s where I find a bit of a disconnect with your view on autism vs. your view on sexuality. “Up with…neurological diversity” doesn’t extend to issues related to gender and gender identity. Why not? We know that sexual desire and etc. is “between the ears,” so how is it that you don’t see homosexuality, transgenderism, etc. as included within your “neurological diversity?” After all, the basis for those is as well understood as the basis for the autistic spectrum.

Late to the thread. But I wanted to share what my husband told me a few hours ago. A service provider he frequently hires, a large management/financial consulting firm, has told him they are actively recruiting high-functioning autistic young adults. The firm has discovered their neurological diversity (did this use to be described as non-neuro typical?) is an asset in this industry.

As the parents of an Asberger’s college age young man, who will graduate next year, I find this to be very interesting.